The Gold System: Explorations of the (Ongoing) Fate of Colombia’s Pre-Columbian Gold Artifacts

Guaquería, the practice of non-archaeological excavation of antiquity in the Andean region, has undergone substantive historical transformation in Colombia over hundreds of years. This article understands this practice as part of a dynamic system of relationships between archaeologists, museums, private collectors and the guaqueros. Occasioned by the mass-guaquería of the early 1990s when the “Malagana Treasure” was unearthed, I periodize these relationships with reference to Colombian anthropologists’ scholarship and the significance of the Museo del Oro in Bogotá.